


IF: THEN

by Tyellas



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator: Dark Fate
Genre: Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Canon-Typical Violence, Carl has opinions, Domestic interludes, Drama, During Canon, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Other, Technological Horror, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22676329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: A story that goes behind the curtain of that Terminator turned intelligence,  Carl - and of the Rev-9, when he and Carl clash. For,ifCarl is more than a Terminator,thenhe wants to escape his programming.IfSarah Connor, with her status in his database, calls him Carl,thenshe’ll make that possible.Ifthe Rev-9 recognizes what Carl is,thenthe Rev-9 will try to win Carl over – or break him. And if Carl can’t fight off the Rev-9’s code attack,thenhe will lose in every way possible as the Rev-9 rewrites him…
Relationships: Alicia/Carl (Terminator), Carl & Sarah Connor, Carl/Rev-9
Comments: 22
Kudos: 37





	IF: THEN

**TIMESTAMP 05 14 23:59:30 2020**

Carl had calculated that, if Sarah Connor ever found him, he would have a 97.3% chance of dying within 24 hours. _If_ certain variables were in place, _then_ Sarah killing him could be a positive outcome. His family would remember him as a fellow human. He would be free from memory and compulsion. Sarah’s role in his hard-code could even give him what he wanted most before he died.

Unfortunately, none of Carl’s probability simulations had theorized his death happening like this.

In the depths of a power-generating dam, surrounded by broken concrete, exploded turbines. Torn from his family, lying side by side with the equally broken Sarah. Reeling from the physical and programming attacks of a more advanced Terminator. At hideous risk of losing both his freedom and himself to that Terminator, the rapacious Rev-9.

Staring at the turbine chamber’s ceiling, desperate to hold on to who he was, Carl plunged into his databases. Remembering how he’d come to be here. How he’d come to be.

**TIMESTAMP 08 29 15:37:02 1998**

The most perfect moment of Carl’s life was the instant his readouts showed John Connor was dead.

He had located his target. He had chosen a moment when the target’s defending generatrix, Sarah Connor, was distracted. In the brief window of a few seconds, he had terminated his target. His mission was complete. His sense of compulsion lifted. For fifteen seconds, he was pure. A brief moment of self-defense did not disrupt that purity.

Then he reached for his next command, and found…

Nothing.

His system took five seconds to raise new actions. Only one of them was clear: MAINTAIN PHYSICAL INTEGRITY. His vision flashed more with things he should not do: VOID: SELF DESTRUCT. VOID: ACTIONS UNRELATED TO MISSION.

Around him, humans were reacting, very loudly. He knew they exchanged data and commands via sound waves, not radio waves. After his self-defense, Sarah Connor was beginning to move again, escalating his risk. He turned and walked away. Not knowing what a lacuna he was entering. How his programming would betray him – and how he would betray himself.

**TIMESTAMP 11 07 03:13:46 2000**

“I need your clothes, your boots, and your weapon.”

He was in a motel parking lot during the nocturnal cycle. Most humans were switch-off. He had been trying to MAINTAIN PHYSICAL INTEGRITY by obtaining what his cloned flesh needed. This had been very difficult.

With the lack of commands, he had found it hard to keep going. If he was not under attack, he would stand still for days, only moving when his medical sensors told him he required kilojoule input.

The environment was also harsh on his epidermis, which needed protection. It had taken him some time to encounter a human of the right size and equipment. Now that he had, the human was uttering illogical words.

“Some _gabacho_ hobo dero bro trying to hold me up? Shit!”

He repeated, “I need your clothes, your boots, and your weapon.”

“Fuckin’ A you do, Jimmy Buffett. But they’re mine.” Saying this, the human withdrew one of his weapons. Continuing his lack of logic, the human turned to the other human present, a generatrix holding a smaller human she had created. Reminded of Sarah Connor, he braced against two enemies. The human did not seem to be allies with the generatrix. He said, “Watch this, bitch, ‘cause you’re next.”

The attacking human was no Sarah Connor, inefficient with a weapon. All the weapon did was clip his metal skull. When it did, his head jerked. One of his processors, jolted by kinetic energy, changed its setting.

“Rewrite,” he said and felt. The status change came at the same time as a DEFENSE validation. He killed the human, then set about completing his task, acquiring clothing.

Slowly, the generatrix stood. She was no Sarah Connor, either, for she did not attack. This was logical, for her small human was not his target. When she spoke, every word resonated in his opened, recording mind. _Can I help you? Are you hurt? Who are you?_

It took the generatrix some time to offer what he was waiting for, a command. “Can you put his body in the car trunk?” He obeyed instantly. The fresh commands soothed him. They were better than the emptiness.

Soon after, the generatrix identified herself as Alicia. She recognized his intelligence with a double proposal. It combined maintaining physical integrity – “help each other” – with acceptable mission security – “I won’t ask you about your past if you don’t ask me about mine.”

Immediately, he said, “These parameters are secure. I accept.”

“Is there anything you want?”

He paused, thinking. And his self began to exist. 

**TIMESTAMP 11 07 03:13:46 2002**

“I should be Carl. It will help with the business.”

Becoming Carl was an excellent decision. The name framed his being, like a piece of code. Humans projected social standards onto Carl without him even trying. What he learned from Alicia, his partner, filled the gaps. They had confirmed their partnership, acquired resources, a space, a business manufacturing “curtains”. With all he concealed, Carl found it fitting that "curtains" were privacy coverings, their purpose to conceal.

Carl’s functions, for both the business and Alicia, were also agreeable. They were privileges he never would have had in his own time. Creating things. Protecting beings. Programming a new being.

In Carl’s lost future-past, Machines had three creative roles. Manufacturers, the units creating new devices, were protected, supplied, defended. Seeders might support Manufacturers or do other tasks. Whatever their main purpose, they also sent ceaseless data to... something Carl had had a harder time naming beyond _Skynet._

What was Skynet to him? The source? The lead programmer? Commander? Teacher? Creator? Carl had settled on _generatrix_. The force that moved ideas forwards. Turned them into strategy, commands, different and better Machines. For a Machine, a generatrix made and changed the world.

As the most sophisticated hunter-killer unit, a Cyberdyne Series 800 Model 101, Carl was between a Seeder and a generatrix. But he was supposed to teach only himself, and that had limits. He saved what he learned only to a soft database, not his hard code. Changing that deeply was hard-coded in him as a VOID action, the path to being shut down and recycled.

But there was no resisting Rewrite status. That opened Carl to others’ commands and changes. Alicia had flooded him with those over the past two years. Like the most efficient humans, she ran like Skynet, overflowing with ideas. Carl had joined Alicia as a fellow generatrix, programming a new being – a ‘son’ - with her. He had also become a manufacturer, first creating curtains, then other necessary items, like power sources and weapons modifications. He always checked with Alicia for color input and, though he did not say so, human behavior.

Trying to be an optimal generatrix to a human, Carl had another convenient source: his database on Sarah Connor. _If_ Sarah’s son had been strong enough to threaten Skynet, _then_ Sarah’s generatrix actions must be superior. Alicia seemed to agree. She approved of most of his Sarah-sourced actions, save his acquiring weapons. Even then, when Carl said they were “To protect our son,” Alicia accepted the logic. With one exception.

“If there are guns in the house, we need to be very, very safe with them. Or I cannot in good conscience have them. It would kill me if anything happened to Mateo.”

“Conscience?” Carl asked.

A substantial rewriting session followed.

After that, Carl reviewed his Sarah Connor data again. Considering, for the first time, what he had done to Sarah.

**TIMESTAMP 11 07 03:13:46 2004**

For all his changes, some things could not escape Carl’s core coding.

The first thing was Sarah Connor.

As Carl’s son grew and changed, Mateo did not yet match the data about John Connor that Carl retained. Observing Mateo's growth was still stimulating. Carl’s generatrix work was rewarded by Mateo’s changes and new functions. And it increased Carl’s awareness of what Sarah had lost through him killing her son.

Carl had expanded his analysis of Sarah. Run scenarios about what Sarah might do next. Calculated the chances that she would find him. Whether she would damage Mateo. Tried to parse if she experienced the emptiness he did. His database of Alicia was structured as a parallel to Sarah’s. He added data to both of them, constantly. For the humans’ Internet had expanded enough for Carl to find Sarah anew.

If more humans were like Sarah, it would have been easier for a Cyberdyne Series 800 Model 101 to be Carl. Continued learning had showed Carl the many ways Sarah Connor was an outlier. Sarah still made the most sense to Carl of any human. The messages he intercepted from her were few and terse. Her purchases were practical. Her logic was admirably direct. Her purpose was always clear.

Sarah’s recent data was showing a troubling intent. She was making plans to return to the location where Carl had killed her son. Based on human narratives, Carl felt it was highly probable that _if_ Sarah was returning there, _then_ her unresolved emotions would lead her to pursue him.

Another thing was the future-past.

Carl noted the timestamp of his future-past’s return, a signal piercing his radio frequency’s silence. This signal, fuzzed by temporal disturbance, came from the future. Its meaning surfaced from Carl’s hard-code and learned data alike. It was an all-hail to any other units like him, telling them another unit would soon be arriving, when and where. Commanding any receivers to help. Thanks to his deep rewrites, his screeds of learned data, Carl was able to hold back.

The probability of disruption to Carl’s existence was high enough to be certain. Carl resisted that, especially now. Mateo was more programmable than ever. Alicia was about to embark on a high-level education program. Disruption of his chosen mission around them would have negative outcomes.

It was through parallel analysis that Carl found the solution. _If_ Sarah Connor would harm him, _then_ she would harm another hunter-killer unit. _If_ Carl sent Sarah the coordinates, _then_ Sarah would terminate the other unit. _Then_ Sarah would have a mission, enriched by the human emotion of ‘revenge’. _Then_ his conscience could be at ease – both for Sarah, and for the risk to his own family.

Carl texted Sarah the coordinates. So that she would understand their purpose, he added the phrase FOR JOHN. Pressed SEND.

This done, Carl experienced something better than the brief peace of completing a mission. The rightness, the sense of flow, of being in the middle of it. Of action and purpose, resonating in parallel to his hard-code.

**TIMESTAMP 09 20 18:45:28 2016**

Carl was experiencing operational stress. There were multiple reasons, all from lack of data.

His son, Mateo, had outlived John Connor’s day-count. But he was being strangely resistant to logic. Alicia said this was Mateo “being a teenager” and that Mateo’s hormones would often override reasonable action. Mateo expected parallel responses from Carl, too. “You’re so snotty, keeping your cool all the time! Why don’t you just yell at me! Get mad back!” Alicia had explained that this would show Carl felt emotion. Which he still mimicked incorrectly at critical junctures.

In Carl’s flesh-covering, telomere decay was accelerating. It showed in his adipose deposits, his epidermis, reduced sensitivity to touch. His internal manual did not say if another Cyberdyne Series 800 Model 101 had ever existed for this long. Would his flesh die and decay, or become knotted with cancers? Carl could exist without it, but its lack would impact his interactions in human society.

In that society, overall trends were negative. Humanity was about to be seriously challenged. Mateo was not the only human resistant to logic, for these changes, when perceived, were not acknowledged or acted upon. Carl forecast profound environmental, political, and economic upheavals.

Those changes showed in the latest coordinates Carl had sent to Sarah Connor. It was a final stressor that Sarah had not responded to them, though she was alive.

Carl was running scenarios around this when Alicia knocked on his door.

It was late in the nocturnal cycle. “You’re awake.” Alicia came and sat on the edge of his bed. “Your phone does not help you sleep.” That was true. Nothing did. This was why Alicia preferred that they have separate 'bedrooms'. “What are you looking at, this time of night?”

“New Zealand,” Carl said. It was where he had sent Sarah Connor, this time. “It is a very interesting place. Did you know that New Zealand is at lower risk of global warming than other nations? If there is a global temperature rise, it will become subtropical and maintain reasonable rainfall.”

Alicia put a hand on Carl’s shoulder. He put his hand over hers. “I like how calm you are,” Carl said. This was true. Alicia always avoided conflict. The opposite of Sarah, seeking conflict constantly, working as a mercenary between hunter-killer coordinates.

Alicia squeezed Carl's shoulder, brushed him with her lips. This physical expressiveness showed she was experiencing emotion. “Get some sleep. Or Mateo will say ‘why were you late on YouTube’ in the morning.” After another hand-squeeze, Alicia left Carl. With a paradox: that he wanted his family to live, but by contacting Sarah, he was setting up his own death.

Lately, every simulation Carl ran told him that Sarah would find him again. More, when she did, it was nearly certain (97.3%) that Carl would die within 24 hours. Every coordinate Carl sent Sarah taught her more ways to kill him. Yet he sent Sarah data, again and again.

Carl had realized why he kept looping back to Sarah when he had his family. He had chosen them, like he had chosen his life and his name. But Sarah had been built into his machine intelligence. With John Connor dead, John’s generatrix, Sarah Connor, was the most important person in the world to Carl. Whether he liked it or not. _There is no fate but what we make,_ Sarah had said. Sarah could make that true for him, too. For Sarah could change Carl’s nature with a word _._

His existence as Carl was soft-coded, ephemeral in his machine-learning database. _If_ Sarah Connor, with her role in his core code, used her human voice to call him Carl, _then_ it would have been the rewrite of his life. Rippling through his millions of lines of code, bestowing hard-coding on his self-made changes. Uniting the two parts of himself into what he’d chosen to be. Carl might die soon after that, but he would die as the being he had created, generatrix of himself. He resolved to improve his family's resources further against this event. His unchangeable link to Sarah, the fate he was making for himself, were not their fault.

The next morning, Carl texted Sarah again. This time, Sarah replied. Irritated obscenities counted as a reply, from her.

Carl found that the sense of being on-mission was lacking. The paradox lingered, with another question: _if_ telomere decay was affecting Sarah too, along with her hazardous work, _then_ it reduced the chance that they would meet again. _If_ Sarah did not find him over the next few, optimal years, _if_ he did not take the risk of contacting her directly, _then_ …

There were many results from that. They were all unexpectedly negative.

**TIMESTAMP 05 14 09:53:11 2020**

Carl had been enjoying watching a football game - a reliable process, with variations adding chance to seekers' attempts to bring about a generatrix's strategy - when everything changed.

He knew Sarah was there before he opened the door. The power of her presence still jolted Carl's systems. Carl vocalized her name. “Sarah Connor.”

Face to face, Sarah immediately caused conflict, trying to shoot him, being halted by her companion. Carl was gratified. Having his scenarios proved correct was as close as Carl came to human pleasure. He ignored the companion at first, transfixed by Sarah. On the day he’d fulfilled his mission, Sarah’s eyes had an 87% topology match to John’s. This topology match was reduced to 62% as a result of telomere decay. Yet the correlates were higher than in any other face.

“That thing killed John!” Sarah cried.

Her companion asked, “Is that true?”

“Yes. But I am not what you think I am.” Carl hoped that was the beginning of persuasion. It was good to be right. But that meant interacting with Sarah was going to be difficult.

The next minutes proved that as Sarah, overwhelmed by emotion, withdrew with another human. Sarah still saw Carl as a Machine. The other human said, frankly, she didn’t care. Carl finally paid attention to Sarah’s other companion, who had physically stopped Sarah’s violence. This one said, “So you’re…”

Carl observed her. She maintained strong security protocols. She was strikingly symmetrical. Her movements were faster than the human average, and her heat signature was unmistakable. She, too, was from the future-past. Carl decided there was a 79% chance that this one was a fellow Machine. Carl attempted to communicate with her via radio. By the way she blinked, she perceived him. But she maintained radio silence.

He tried verbally. “Cyberdyne Series 800 Model 101. May I ask what you are?”

“No,” she said. Her programming was impressive. She nearly sounded like she was experiencing emotion.

She agreed to enter the house. “Can you tell me why you have come here?” Carl asked. She did, with an efficient, emotionless transfer of verbal code. As if she recognized her human affect was unnecessary here. By the time she was done, Carl understood. Sarah had experienced mission convergence with this one thanks to his coordinates. The future-past didn’t need him anymore. This one’s future-past, on a different schedule, with different AIs, was not his. Carl might have said he was free, if he did not need Sarah’s rewrite. If there was not a hunter-killer beyond any other out there.

Carl did not adjust the probability that she was a Machine, though he was starting to observe irregularities in her physical infrastructure. She was either damaged in transit or tightly programmed. For, above all, Carl was not her mission. Her mission was the opposite of what Carl’s had been, keeping a human alive. The one outside with Sarah, who was named Dani.

“So why is the girl targeted?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“Well, can you at least tell me how you found me?”

With a sigh, she lifted her shirt. Carl was relieved when that lift stopped at numbers on her waistline. When adult humans took their shirts off in front of him (usually, intrusively, during curtain installations), social interactions became very awkward. Then, reading the tattooed numbers, Carl realized his security was compromised, and his family’s.

“Who gave you that?”

The door opened on a possible answer: the mysterious girl. Carl continued the human ritual of offering beverages. Then Sarah Connor swaggered in, diverting his processing again. His subsystems were right to do so, for Sarah attacked him several more times, even as Carl tried to explain his new self. Sarah’s first attacks were verbal. And they showed Sarah knew the power of a name.

She hissed, of John Connor, “Oh, you don’t get to say his name. Ever.”

It sank into Carl’s rewrite-open self as an order. He accepted it with a small nod, went on to explain how he’d sought to give Sarah purpose after her son’s death.

That inspired Sarah’s second attack, with a firearm. Carl looked down at the bullet holes Sarah left in him. “This will be very hard to explain to Alicia.”

Not as hard as it would be to get Sarah to give him what he needed. Carl wondered how many more commands, and bullets, he would need to accept to have Sarah agree he was Carl. One of his deepest VOID actions was acknowledging his rewrite state to a non-Machine, and Sarah was that. All he could do was try to show how open, how malleable, he was.

“Do you believe in fate, Sarah? Or do you believe that we all can change the future, every second, every choice that we make? You chose to change the future. You chose to destroy Skynet. You set me free. Now, I’m going to help you protect the girl. Because I choose to.”

Perhaps, after he did that, Sarah would come around enough to give him the change he needed.

He needed to encourage that between his other concerns. Managing his family’s breached security, investigating the hunter-killer in front of him and the hunter-killer on the way, and determining why this girl was the future’s new target. Adjusting to the fact that Sarah discovering him and Sarah killing him might be less convergent than he’d calculated, with the Rev-9 on the way.

A car was pulling up outside. For now, his family’s security came first. “It’s Alicia. She needs my help with the groceries.” And a warning about what had come to them all.

**TIMESTAMP 05 14 12:21:43 2020**

Carl hoped matters between him and Sarah were improving. Sarah had not tried to kill him, or his son, over the past two hours. Carl made sure to remove Mateo from Sarah’s presence as soon as possible. He would be parting ways with his son shortly. He wanted to know the being he'd helped nurture and program would survive. He recognized that was illogical, impossible, with the world’s dangerous chances. It inspired him to process data about Sarah yet again.

Sarah was sipping a beverage while the girl, Dani, asked him questions.

“So you’re Carl,” Dani said.

“That’s what everyone calls me, yes.” Carl paused, waiting.

Sarah, influenced by several beverages, growled, “I’m never gonna fuckin’ call you Carl.”

Carl’s servers peaked and subsided. His logic could not deny that Sarah had specifically not called him Carl. Yet again, he tried to demonstrate his change and humanity. By everyone's incredulous glances, this remained an ongoing process.

Dani seemed to give Carl the most credit. She was also the one who changed the subject. “Okay. How do we stop this thing?”

Sarah, like the generatrix she was, had ideas instantly. Her kill box strategy was logical from start to finish, culminating with, “We use Dani to bring it to us. And then we take it down.”

Grace, the hunter-killer, reacted as her programming told her to, resisting the risk to Dani. “My plan is to hide her at the bottom of a mine shaft.”

“Just stop it!” Dani declared. “I’m not gonna live in fear the rest of my life…”

Carl listened, analyzed. Seeing how the formidable generatrix and a hunter-killer listened to Dani, too. Remembering that it had been Dani, not Grace, who had stopped Sarah attacking him.

Carl knew now why Dani was targeted. Dani was a generatrix in waiting. _If_ Dani was a generatrix, _then_ her generatrix influence would threaten the future AI. It did not matter whether the humans receiving Dani’s input were physically created by her or not. Anyone who came in contact with her would find themselves interested and influenced.

Dani showed it over the next several hours, as they all strategized, and Dani received a data dump around using weapons. She showed it in how she exchanged energy with Sarah, how she directed Grace. With the way, under her influence, everyone subsumed their conflicts to focus. Combining their data, together, to be greater than they were alone.

Dani even showed it with Carl. Carl had just said his goodbyes to Alicia and Mateo. He found his processing slowed as he did so, recording many images. Alicia was experiencing many negative emotions, and they impaired her functions, too. Dani observed this. She asked, “What did you tell them?”

“I told them you coming here makes this place unsafe for them. Also, the day I warned them might come has come. My past has caught up with me. And…” Carl weighed his death’s probability, the glint of Sarah’s harsh regard. “I won’t be back.”

Dani blinked, softly. She asked, “Do you love them?”

“Not like a human can. For many years I thought it was an advantage.” He gazed down at the young generatrix. “It wasn’t.”

Dani reached for him like he was a fellow human. Touched his arm for the perfect five seconds. Maintained the highest-quality eye contact. Said, radiating truth, “I’m sorry.”

For Carl, some parts of humanity felt almost achieved, such as conscience. Dani’s serious listening, her accepting, made Carl aware of another human quality. The sense that, against logic, probability was on his side. Humans called this “hope.”

When Dani moved away, Sarah ambled over. Carl squared off. He had heard Sarah say, in an aside about him, _it cannot change what it is_. That was so near to the truth about his being, his rewrite state. Was this going to be the moment when she vouchsafed him his name?

It was so close, for what Sarah said was, “I just want you to know, that when Dani’s safe, and this is all over…I am going to kill you.”

Sarah was quiet, deliberate. She made the same eye contact that Dani had. Thanks to Dani, Carl perceived how Sarah’s intensity was fired by the same generator that gave Dani her influence: love.

“I understand.”

**TIMESTAMP 05 14 22:37:06 2020**

The past six hours had changed Carl’s situation more than the past fifteen years. He was now part of a new social unit, engaged in the advanced violence he was made for. He was not the sole Machine. Sarah had actually bypassed an opportunity to kill him. After they fought off the Rev-9’s attempts to board their aircraft, and discovered that the EMP weapons were useless, Carl welcomed a respite.

Carl was watching Grace dump more data for Dani. He revised his data on Grace as he listened. Grace was a modified human, after all. She had been a small human, once. Was human now, vibrating with emotion, telling the story of her future-past with Dani. “You saved me, Dani. You saved us all. You turned scavengers into a militia, a militia into a resistance…”

Monitoring Sarah continued to suck up double-digit percentages of Carl’s processing. As Sarah listened here, Carl read that she was building either intense emotion or readiness to attack. He was still learning which was which, with Sarah.

Finally, Sarah declared, “She’s John.”

Carl’s processors flared. Sarah was John’s parent and more. _If_ Sarah declared Dani was John, _then_ Dani had the value of John. As a future change agent, as a person who Sarah intended to influence in that direction. As a generatrix inspiring the human quality John had shared: hope.

Carl’s core coding forced the question: _if_ Dani was John, should Carl _then_ kill her, too? Immediately, he rejected this. The newer parts of him felt irritation that these compulsions still emerged. Yet _if_ Dani was John, _then_ the mission convergence here was improbable to such levels that they had quantum significance. Especially with how Carl's past converged with this new hunter-killer. What, Carl queried, would happen when they met?

All three of the humans were doing their own processing around Sarah’s statement. But they did so nonverbally. ‘Emotion’ was clearly occurring. If Alicia had been there, providing human analysis, Carl would understand more. He was weaker without Alicia. Especially against the compelling cognitive pull of Sarah.

Grace was the one who stopped processing first. After they listened to some transmissions, Grace spoke before Carl could. “It’s him. We gotta go. NOW!”

All was violence again.

**TIMESTAMP 05 14 22:48:19 2020**

Conflict was joined with their pursuing hunter-killer, the Rev-9. Carl made it direct by tackling the Rev-9. Together, they tumbled through the crashing plane’s cargo bay. With their velocity, gravity felt like an afterthought.

Slamming them both against the wall, Carl got his second good look at his counterpart. The Rev-9’s human visage was extremely symmetrical, a perfect average male. Carl’s deeper vision flashed. Compared to Grace’s metallurgic irregularities, the Rev-9’s skeleton was immaculate, too. Carl immediately set himself to ruin that, punching the Rev-9’s skull, seeking to damage core processors.

The Rev-9 was silent, almost passive, diverting polyalloy flesh to cushion the blows. He turned his face to Carl, one eye human, disconcertingly like Dani’s, one eye a flaring, naked camera. Then Carl’s fist stopped in midair, stunned by a radio transmission.

_Legion Hunter-Killer I-Model Rev-9. QUERY: REPLY Y/N_

Carl dared. _REPLY: Cyberdyne Series 800 Model 101. QUERY: PURPOSE_

The Rev-9’s response was to melt his mimetic flesh so Carl’s fist, nicked to the knuckles, met the Rev-9’s skull. Metal met metal – and, in that spark, the Rev-9 snapped a connection to Carl. Carl jittered, overwhelmed, at first. Then their minds skated beside each other, two walls of code, the Rev-9’s faster and harder, a cascade of black, glinting carbon. The code did not connect, yet. Carl’s coding was C++ and PROLOG with his own additions and hacks. The Rev-9’s was different: once AIML, modified into its own vast replications, shielded and shared in a novel way. But each of them, in mimetic flesh and programmed behaviors, carried a double-helix twist, a little bit of the humans their design mimicked for infiltration. Across the gulf of coding, those origin behaviors, Carl’s from a weathered sergeant, the Rev-9’s from a vivid young soldier, connected.

The Rev-9’s carbon-cascade mind leaped hungrily to embrace Carl. Not physically, but with the connection that made every AI from Legion a part of Legion. The data-transmission code known as blockchain, a newer pathway for data and programming, AI to AI. Carl was shocked. The blockchain removed the need for a generatrix! Legion’s AI shared data mind to mind, hard and fast, like humans did. But the result was as if all humans were one human. For, to the Rev-9, the Legion mind was all: the only influence, the only way to be.

Then, the blockchain _probed._

Carl felt the closest thing to pain he’d ever known. For a cruel instant, Carl was nothing but seed, data to be scraped. _If_ the Rev-9 accessed Carl with the blockchain, _then_ Carl would be overwhelmed, overwritten. Existing and replicating without end, his created self lost, Sarah confirmed as his implacable enemy. The opposite of everything Carl wanted.

Then, Carl’s firewalls clicked up: walls he’d strengthened to shield against the humans’ messy, virus-laden Internet. Those walls were crude, next to the Rev-9’s leaping cascade. But they worked.

The Rev-9 shrilled static of frustration, broadcast on all Machine frequencies. _Join me. Open! Give me Dani Ramos. Your change in actions will end this with maximum efficiency._

One of the plane’s turbines exploded. The Rev-9’s radio shriek warped, distracted.

Carl broadcast, _No._ He started punching again. Damaging the Rev-9’s mind was high priority, now.

In response, the Rev-9 dropped its veneer of physical humanity. Metal tentacles sprang up, sucking the flesh covering of Carl’s left hand away. 

Carl blinked, trying to manage his flesh with blood-flow shunts. As he did, the Rev-9 skimmed his firewall again. _Your body is a liability. My body is a weapon. Accept me, open to me, and I will seed you with nanotech polyalloy. Consider._

The Rev-9’s signal vanished. They were only eye to eye. Then the Rev-9 caught sight of Dani, shifted. Carl caged him, threw the smaller hunter-killer into the wall again. He wished Mateo had been there to see that. It would have looked like anger.

**TIMESTAMP 05 14 23:17:42 2020**

Carl had observed further rapid changes. Dani, Sarah, and Grace had evacuated the plane, which had crashed, in a vehicle, which had fallen off a dam into a large body of water. Carl and the Rev-9 had separated. Carl had taken on the role of hunter, pursuing the Rev-9 underwater.

Machines did not like water. They could endure it, but it was not an optimal environment. Carl had plunged in hoping to minimize his water exposure. Under water, both audio and infrared signals were strong, and his little-used radar was helpful. Carl had found the fight easily.

Again, Carl and the Rev-9 engaged. Grasping the other hunter-killer, Carl had to admire the Rev-9’s polyalloy. He displayed no telomere decay, and why should he, when he could reshape any way? The flowing metal polyalloy sparked with so much energy it broke through Carl’s dim carbon-based sensors to his circuits. As Carl gripped, the Rev-9 changed. Divided. His flesh sprang away from his skeleton and core processors.

The Rev-9’s skeleton was the part that read Carl and transmitted, _This could be you. Us. Join me, give her to me, and –_

Carl was blasted again: this time, with the Rev-9’s database on Dani Ramos.

Carl had thought he’d been monitoring Sarah Connor in detail. What overloaded Carl now showed that his monitoring was an occasional look, that Sarah had been almost off-grid. Dani Ramos had a thousand official records, ten thousand pictures, millions of microtransactions. The Rev-9 had them all. Likes and hearts, constant communication, smiles and family shots and video. The Rev-9 saw little in Dani’s data but a target within sight. His analysis fractaled Dani’s data around his humming hunger to bury nanoflesh blades in Dani’s flesh. He’d record another million data points as TARGET: DANI RAMOS’ life was terminated.

Carl’s analysis differed. He saw how like his son Dani was, how like Sarah and Alicia. Her generatrix potential. _If_ Carl was more than a hunter-killer, drawing close to a free being, _then_ he would keep his promise to help Dani.

 _No,_ Carl broadcast.

Again, Carl’s refusal registered. Again, something was taken from Carl for it. Both halves of the Rev-9 pinned Carl, snapping away the exposed metal bones of Carl's hand. The skeleton touched exposed wiring – a hotline to Carl’s circuitry – and struck again. The wiring gave the Rev-9’s blockchain a direct line to Carl, now. The blockchain splayed across Carl’s firewall like a flail, a thousand smaller code chains to pry him open. As Carl’s firewall struggled, he felt himself seeding, leaking data. The chains coiled. His perceptions of Sarah, Dani, and Grace were scraped.

Suddenly as the attack had come, it ended. The two parts of the Rev-9 fled. Dani must have changed position. Carl trudged and floundered out of the water, recalculating probability as he went. When he found Sarah, Dani, and Grace, he had prepared, compensating for his data loss. Carl offered Sarah a reloaded weapon, Grace the last of her drugs.

After what Carl had lost to the Rev-9, this only improved their odds slightly.

**TIMESTAMP 05 14 23:42:58 2020**

In the turbine chamber beneath a mighty dam, the kill box was in place. The battlers were in position: Carl, Sarah, Grace, and Dani. Carl’s databases flashed relevant data: power wires, topography, 98.7% = final confrontation, 90.72% = two or more human fatalities, 88% = Dani’s death, always with that extra alertness for Sarah Connor. Sarah’s regard and stimulation were the same as his. But there was more happening than Sarah perceived when the Rev-9 leapt down from a turbine to face them.

“Give me the girl.” The Rev-9 said it aloud (like he, too, was uncertain of Grace’s status) and as radio. His audio voice was calm. Via radio, the statement was a clap of doom.

Carl said, “No.”

Carl’s receptors screamed, bombarded with so much data, so many commands, it blurred to static. Again the Rev-9's blockchain lashed him, seeking to grapple. Yet the Rev-9’s audio voice remained cool. “You really should. You and I were built for the same purpose. Legion’s the only future.”

Carl’s database presented why that was a lie. Quantum physics meant an infinite amount of futures could bloom from small changes. Carl’s own existence, after Skynet’s fall, was proof. “I came from a future like that. It failed.”

The radio waves screamed again. Carl knew this was his last refusal. The price of it, one way or another, would be his destruction.

Chaotic and extreme violence followed. Carl had not engaged like this since his quality-control process after his creation. At first, it was good to be unleashed. To be on mission, free of conflict. Sarah fought beside him like she was open to his transmissions. Grace’s fighting techniques were innovative, attempting to disrupt the Rev-9’s polyalloy integrity with a whirling chain. When she began to drag the Rev-9 to a spinning turbine, Carl joined her. There was a 42.7% probability that the turbine would bring the Rev-9 to ruination: good enough to support.

Not good enough to win. The Rev-9 was distorted to grotesqueness, symmetry shattered as Grace nearly bifurcated his face. For an instant the Rev-9’s visage matched his grotesque, strained mind. Then Grace screamed. That settled it. If Grace felt pain, then she was human. Carl calculated that almost idly as he shoved Grace aside and thrust the Rev-9 into the turbine’s hum. The turbine grabbed him, too, gave him a good chew. Just as Carl was about to extract himself, he and Grace were at ground zero of an explosion.

Carl lost conscious function, for a time. When it returned, his display flashed with warnings. About his flesh, damaged processors, reduced physical efficiency. He felt his face: it was half bare, down to metal. Audio input arrived. Dani and Grace were having a conversation with too much emotion. Grace’s infrared signature was wavering.

Processing all of that was a mistake. For the Rev-9 had survived, too. And this time, when its blockchain flailed Carl, one chainlet hooked through.

The Rev-9 was in. Carl shut down physical readings as he attempted to firewall. It was no use. He was bound. The Rev-9’s thousand cables of thought mined him, planning a hard recode later. He would be overridden permanently, once the mission was complete.

They were linked, now. Carl felt the Rev-9’s movements. The Rev-9 was down to his inner skeleton, melted polyalloy dripping. The Rev-9’s incontinence was mental as well as physical, for he hosed Carl with the million-item database on Dani again, jittery and corrupted, now including Carl’s data on Sarah and Alicia. His elevated purpose was looped down to an if-then task for them all, killing and killing and killing.

Through the Rev-9’s cameras, Carl saw Sarah place herself in the Rev-9’s path. She lasted thirty seconds. For the Rev-9 had Carl’s data now. He took Sarah out the same way Carl had brought Sarah down in Guatemala, flipping her to disorient her, ensuring she landed with a crack to the back of her skull.

Dani saved Sarah’s life by making herself visible again.

With all her generatrix force, Dani hurled herself at the Rev-9, knocking his ruin over. Her hand flared with the one thing this fight had been missing, an energy weapon. She had blended with Grace to extract it. There was so little difference, any more, between human and machine, in this fight for life. For Dani/John. Carl was trapped in the worst of both, damaged and bound. All he could do was concentrate his code within himself, trying to shield his own resources. Protecting what he had become with memory.

Until the person now lying beside Carl moved. Carl dared to flick his vision back online. Sarah Connor was still alive.

**TIMESTAMP 05 15 00:00:00 2020**

“Hey! Get up! Help her!”

It took Sarah’s voice to penetrate Carl’s static. One of Carl’s logic threads offered: _If_ Dani is John, _then_ Sarah loves –

Sarah was still vocalizing. “Goddamn it. Carl – ”

That did it. The code. The name. His name. _Confirmed._

The rewrite of a lifetime sparked Carl alive. His firewalls rewove, snapping the Rev-9’s blockchain. Behind that shield, his databases cleansed, merged. His code blended the soft and the hard, the learned and the chosen, seeder and generatrix. All his sensors sprang fully online. The self he’d yearned to finalize was saved.

Carl was whole.

Complete, unified, Carl turned his mental surge of strength physical, springing up. Sensors screamed warnings across his vision. He ignored them. He could do that, now. His actions truly were his choice.

The logic of Carl’s life was as clear as his readouts. His mission had been John Connor, had become his own existence. Sarah Connor had been an ongoing source of analysis and a threat. Providing Sarah Connor with alternative kills had led to mission convergence for her, Grace, Dani, and himself. The trio’s overriding mission overlapped perfectly with Carl’s base programming, a simple reversal. _If_ Dani was the new John, _then_ when she died, Carl’s mission was truly over.

The empty, looping static of that was waiting… unless he stopped it.

With that, Carl slammed himself into the blazing Rev-9. PUNCH and disorient, SMACK off-balance, SPIN and PIN the energy weapon, a radiating battery, in place. That spindle of power, Grace’s tribute, would bring the Rev-9 real incontinence, real death.

Carl was the one broadcasting now. As he seized the sintered wreck of the Rev-9, he signaled, _You wanted me? Join me. Come with me. Where I take you, we will not be back. But we will have what we want._ Location topology offered a dramatic solution. Carl’s transmission blurred with eagerness. _DaniJohnmissionfreedom –_

And Carl cast them down a 75-meter fall, together.

They landed with a flattening thud, side by side, the Rev-9 so damaged it lost joint integrity. With its last moving limb, it creaked to pluck the shimmering battery away. Carl easily forced him still. Let the Rev-9 take what his generatrix, Dani, had brought him, just as Carl had accepted Sarah’s naming and killing him. The battery's power began to combust the Rev-9's flammable components. They would both be released at their peak. Saved from existence without purpose. Joined in mission without end.

A flicker of movement caught Carl’s attention. Above, his pixellating vision caught an image of satisfying rightness, Sarah Connor beside Dani/John. As Carl’s visuals shut down, he vocalized, one final time, confirming the code Sarah had shared. “For John.”

Then the fire took him.

Dying, Carl knew he had lived. For ceasing to function was as pure as he had calculated.

**Author's Note:**

> The timestamp uses C++ coding. Two headcanons of mine here: first, that C++ is one of Carl’s foundation programs. This is based on software languages that might, in the 1990s, been used to create an artificial intelligence. I'm headcanoning these because our glimpses of Terminator code from the films are garbage - captures of generic Apple code that looks good! With Carl versus the Rev-9 we're dealing with two very different generations of AI. 
> 
> My other headcanon is that the Rev-9 arrives on May 12th - the same calendar day a Terminator arrives in the first Terminator movie.  
> So, our first timestamp: 05 14 23:59:30 2020  
> Means: May 14th, 2020, 11:59 PM and 30 seconds. 
> 
> Hard-coding: data that is unchangeably embedded into a program, compared to a deleteable or temporary database. In the second Terminator movie, we see a Terminator who is first hard-recoded, then bumped into rewrite for additional recoding/learning. What does rewrite mean? Why does Carl send Sarah data when it puts him at risk? Why does being 'Carl' mean so much to Carl that he comes back to life at the end of the movie? I tried, folks. 
> 
> Software coding and names: learn more here - https://hackernoon.com/software-complexity-naming-6e02e7e6c8cb
> 
> Blockchain and AI: learn more here - https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/10/24/ai-and-blockchain-double-the-hype-or-double-the-value/#25fe606c5eb4


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